The early bird catches the worm — and the best employees.

At least that’s the thinking of the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Street Law organization, which are working together to encourage young people of color to extend their educations and consider law-related careers. Among other things, their Corporate Legal Diversity Pipeline program pairs teachers at high schools with corporate lawyers to provide law-related education, role models, and mentors.

“The ACC/Street Law Diversity Pipeline program is [a] wonderful initiative that targets diverse high school students and offers them positive contact with corporate lawyers and insight into the challenging and engaging work that they do,” says Laura Stein, ACC’s outgoing board chair and senior vice president and general counsel of the Clorox Co.

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Diversity programs have moved beyond sensitivity training.

A new survey of more than 2,500 senior HR and training executives revealed a wide variety of diversity initiatives and program elements. The most common? Leadership development.

“Just a few years ago, diversity programs usually meant just awareness training. Those programs were separate from other hard and soft leadership skills training sponsored by the chief learning officer,” says Verna Ford, an executive consultant with Novations Group, the Boston-based consulting firm that commissioned the study.

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Diversity programs have moved beyond sensitivity training.

A new survey of more than 2,500 senior HR and training executives revealed a wide variety of diversity initiatives and program elements. The most common? Leadership development.

“Just a few years ago, diversity programs usually meant just awareness training. Those programs were separate from other hard and soft leadership skills training sponsored by the chief learning officer,” says Verna Ford, an executive consultant with Novations Group, the Boston-based consulting firm that commissioned the study.

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November is anchored by the Thanksgiving holiday, but it also contains the United Nations’ National Day for Tolerance — making it the perfect time to thank your diverse group of employees, and celebrate their differences.

That’s what Henry Schein’s Indianapolis Distribution Center does every year around this time. “In 2004, in part arising out of a comment from one of our Team Schein members, we held our first ‘International Thanksgiving Day’ with the intent of paying tribute to the exceptionally strong workforce our diversity has provided us,” says Jay Price, director of operations at the distribution center.

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A New York-based company that refurbishes cell phones at its factory in Long Island will pay $435,000 to settle a wage discrimination and retaliation suit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The agency charged that First Wireless Group, Inc., engaged in a pattern or practice of race and/or national origin discrimination against a class of Hispanic workers by paying them less for doing the same job as Asian employees and by firing those who complained about the unlawful pay disparity.

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, after a group of former Hispanic employees became aware that Asian employees were being paid $1.50 to $2.00 or more per hour for performing the same work, they circulated a petition asking for equal pay. Rather than looking into the employees’ complaints, the EEOC said, First Wireless responded by firing them and others they believed were involved.

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The first American Indian Day was celebrated in May 1916 in New York. Red Fox James, a Blackfeet Indian, rode horseback from state to state getting endorsements from 24 state governments to have a day to honor American Indians. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed a joint congressional resolution designating November 1990 as “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations have been issued every year since 1994.

Here are some facts about American Indians and Alaska Natives from the U.S. Census Bureau. read more…